Tag Archives: MovieMaker

November 2012 Newsletter: Which Tablet to Buy?, RV Trip Wizard, MovieMaker

Geeks on Tour
Monthly Issue # 61 November 29, 2012 www.geeksontour.com
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Vacation November

November started off with one of our big rallies – the Good Sam Rally in Daytona.  Welcome to over 75 new members that signed up in Daytona!  We taught 2 hands-on classes and 8 different seminars.  Then we were off for a much anticipated vacation to the scuba diving dream island of Cozumel, Mexico.  We had a wonderful time and came back rested, refreshed and ready to take the grandkids to Disney World in the motorhome.  Fort Wilderness makes that a delight!  Park the RV and and take Disney transportation from there.  We highly recommend it!

Calendar: Coming up in December/January

For more details, see our website Calendar.

 

New Picasa Tutorial Videos

Have you looked at our Learning Library in the Picasa section lately?  Wow! There are so many tutorial videos, it would take you nearly 10 hours to watch them all.  Most of them are listed individually, but the list has gotten so long that I’ve decided in my latest videos to group them. 

The first group was for learning how to make Collages.  It’s called ‘Picasa Short Course: Collages and Banners.  In addition to 9 videos, there is written instructions and a printable cheat sheet.  The latest short course is Picasa Short Course on Organizing your Pictures.  It’s not quite finished yet, you’ll find 5 new videos right now, 3 more to come. Check it out and let us know what you think.

Forum Topics

The Q&A Forums on the Geeks on Tour website are a great place to discuss the topics we cover.  This is where we answer our members’ questions.  Anyone can read the forums, you need to be a member to post.   Here are some topics of interest:

  1. Changing the Name of a Blog
  2. Picasa Panorama
  3. Viewing photos from external hard drive
  4. How to locate duplicate photos easily?
  5. Saving an Edited Picasa Picture

RV LED Lighting

There’s more to technology than computers and smartphones!  All the rage in lighting these days is LED lighting.  Brighter, less heat, more efficient, these lights are perfect for RVs.

But, they’re also a bit pricey, the more you understand about them, the better choices you will make.  Our friends at TechnoRV have written a Buyer’s Guide to RV LED Lighting.

Check it out by following this link: TechnoRV Buyer’s Guide

News for RVers

Read about what town is issuing citations to oust RVs from their city, and what other town is inviting RVers to brand new city RV Park.  Also read about what companies are coming out with hot new products for RVers as well as what RV part Police say is a hot target for thieves.

Read these news items and more at the current issue of RVTravel’s Newsletter.

Tablet Computers … Which One to Buy?

tablet-shoppingA Tablet computer seems to be on everyone’s gift list this Christmas and the choices are overwhelming.  From generic, discount house Android tablets for $73 (not recommended) to fully loaded iPad with Retina display for $829.  If someone in your life has asked for a tablet, what do you do?  If they tell you exactly the type of Tablet they want, then you can just use the web and Google to shop.  Click on the image at right and it will take you to a Google search for shopping for tablets.  There’s no way we can compare them all, we can only tell you what we have and why.  But first, let’s talk about Tablets in general.

Continue reading the Article …

RV Trip Wizard for Planning your RV Travels

rvtripwizardWe spend a fair amount of time using our computers for planning our travels and are always on the lookout for tools that will help the process.  The latest one that has caught our attention is RVTripWizard.com.  It is completely web-based.  There is nothing to download to your computer.  You must have an Internet connection, and then you can use any device with a web-browser.  I’ve tried it on our Nexus 7 tablet and on our iPad.  It works, but it’s a lot easier on the computer, just like most websites.

Notice, in the image below, that the maps come from Google Maps, so we already know how to navigate around that part of the screen.  It even includes the Street View ‘Peg Man.’  Also notice the yellow highlighting I added to the left side of the screenshot.

Continue reading the Article …

Using MovieMaker for your Slideshows and Videos

How many of you have a camera that takes video.  A bunch, right?  Now, how many of you ever put that video together with pictures and music and made a movie that you can enjoy showing to others?  Not so many, huh?

Let’s give it another shot OK?  Windows MovieMaker 2012 is really quite simple if you take it slow.  Don’t try to import 2 hours of video and edit it down to a 5 minute movie right away.  Start by learning how to do slide shows with your pictures.  Windows MovieMaker is a free program from Microsoft, it is part of what was called Windows Live Essentials,

Continue Reading the Article …

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That’s all for now. We hope you learned something. Your next issue will be next month. Any questions, please visit our forum. If you like this newsletter, please forward it on to your friends! If you received this issue forwarded by a friend you can subscribe to get your own copy delivered to your in box – it’s free. To see the archives of past newsletters, go to https://geeksontour.com/category/newsletter/.

Happy Computing!

The Geeks on Tour website is an online learning library for Travelers who want to learn to use their computers for managing digital photos, making blogs, using maps and other online resources. Anyone can watch our free videos, read articles on our Computer Tips for Travelers Blog, sign up for our free monthly newsletter, or Picasa weekly tips. A small fee makes you a ‘member‘ and you can then view any of our 200+ video tutorials on these subjects in our Learning LIbrary..

Using MovieMaker for your Slideshows and Videos

MovieMaker 2012 is a Free Tool for editing your Videos and slideshowsHow many of you have a camera that takes video.  A bunch, right?  Now, how many of you ever put that video together with pictures and music and made a movie that you can enjoy showing to others?  Not so many, huh? 

Let’s give it another shot OK?  Windows MovieMaker 2012 is really quite simple if you take it slow.  Don’t try to import 2 hours of video and edit it down to a 5 minute movie right away.  Start by learning how to do slide shows with your pictures.  Windows MovieMaker is a free program from Microsoft, it is part of what was called Windows Live Essentials, now it’s just Windows Essentials.  If you don’t already have it,you can download MovieMaker here.  Even if you do have it, check the version, it was upgraded and improved in August of 2012.  It is now version 2012.

  1. Import the pictures with the ‘Add Photos and Videos’ button
  2. Drag the pictures into the order you want
  3. Set your timing.  Each picture can have it’s own duration, or you can select all the pictures and enter the duration for all of them.  The easiest way to select all is with the Ctrl-A shortcut.  If you don’t set your own duration, the default is 7 seconds – much too long.
  4. Set your transitions.  Same thing, you can do them one at a time, or all at once by clicking ‘Apply to All’.  Transitions are on the Animations tab. Just hover over each one and you’ll see what it does.  Once you click it, the selected picture will show a gray triangle on its left side indicating the transition.  The transition can have a specified duration as well.
  5. Add music by clicking on the Add Music button on the toolbar.  You can select something that’s on your computer or you can download from the suggested sites.  You can also add multiple music selections, just position the playhead by clicking on the slide where you want a new piece of music to start, then choose Add Music, and then Add Music at the Current Point.
  6. You can also add beginning and ending title slides and credit slides and captions on individual slides, but you don’t have to. 
  7. Save your project, then Save your Movie – use the setting ‘Recommended for this Project’ or you can ‘Burn a DVD’ if you want to be able to watch this movie on a DVD player that is not a computer.

You now have a movie of your slideshow, aren’t you proud?!

Video clips work exactly the same way but with one extra editing piece – trimming.  Just bring in one clip and experiment with setting the Start Point, End Point, Trim, and Split.  My recommendation is to bring in each video clip, trim it how you want and Save Movie so that you end up with several clips that are already properly trimmed.  Now you can easily combine them with your pictures and go thru steps 1-7 above.  That’s what I did to create this video of a day we went scuba diving in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.  Then I added one more piece … narration.  Check it out and see what you think.  The entire process for creating this video – starting with reviewing the raw footage – took me about 3 hours.

Have fun!  And, stay tuned for some Geeks on Tour ‘Show Me How’ tutorial videos on using MovieMaker.